Case Study: Asia Pacific Press (APP)

APP is a successful printing and publishing company in its third year. Much of their recent engagements for the university is customized eBooks. As the first 6-months progressed, there were several issues that affected the quality of the eBooks produced and caused a great deal of rework for the company. The local university that APP collaborates with was unhappy as their eBooks were delayed for use by professors and students.

The management of APP was challenged by these projects as the expectations of timeliness and cost- effectiveness was not achieved. The Accounting Department was having difficulties in tracking the cost for each book, and the production supervisor was often having problems knowing what tasks needed to be completed and assigning the right employees to each task. Some of the problems stemmed from the new part-time employees. Since many of these workers had flexible schedules, the task assignments were not always clear when they reported to work. Each book had different production steps, different contents and reprint approvals required, and different layouts and cover designs. Some were just collections of articles to reprint once approvals were received, and others required extensive desktop publishing.

Each eBook was a complex process and customized for each professors module each semester. Each eBook had to be produced on time and had to match what the professors requested. Understanding what each eBook needed had to be clearly documented and understood before starting production. APP had been told by the university how many different printing jobs the university would need, but they were not all arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable in arriving from the professors at the university. Some professors needed rush orders for their classes. When APP finally got all their orders, some of these jobs were much larger than expected.

Each eBook needed to have a separate job order prepared that listed all tasks that could be assigned to each worker. These job orders were also becoming a problem as not all the steps needed were getting listed in each order. Often the estimates of time for each task were not completed until after the work was done, causing problems as workers were supposed to move on to new tasks but were still finishing their previous tasks. Some tasks required specialized equipment or skills, sometimes from different groups within APP. Not all the new part-time hires were trained for all the printing and binding equipment used to print and assemble books.

APP has decided on a template for job orders listing all tasks required in producing an eBook for the university. These tasks could be broken down into separate phases of the work as explained below:

Receive Order Phase - the order should be received by APP from the professor or the university, it should be checked and verified, and a job order started which includes the requesters name, email, and phone number; the date needed, and a full list of all the contents. They should also verify that they have received all the materials that were supposed to be included with that order and have fully identified all the items that they need to request permissions for. Any problems found in checking and verifying should be resolved by contacting the professor.

Plan Order Phase - all the desktop publishing work is planned, estimated, and assigned to production staff. Also, all the production efforts to collate and produce the eBook are identified, estimated, scheduled, and assigned to production staff. Specific equipment resource needs are identified, and equipment is reserved on the schedule to support the planned production effort.

Production Phase - permissions are acquired, desktop publishing tasks (if needed) are performed, content is converted, and the proof of the eBook is produced. A quality assistant will check the eBook against the job order and customer order to make sure it is ready for production, and once approved by quality, each of the requested eBook formats are created. A second quality check makes sure that each requested format is ready to release to the university.

Manage Production Phase this runs in parallel with the Production Phase, a supervisor will track progress, work assignments, and costs for each eBook. Any problems will be resolved quickly, avoiding rework or delays in releasing the eBooks to the university.

Each eBook will be planned to use the standard job template as a basis for developing a unique plan for that eBook project.

When the project manager does not provide enough information on changes in strategy at APP, employees are not able to deliver according to the expectations. It also happens when departments or team members do not share information, objectives, priorities, and processes among themselves. Prepare a Communication Management Plan relating to the case study with detailed discussions on each element of the plan.